stop coming. Seven of them, one after another, took a diagonal course to the 

 grass. The mother soon coaxed them to a woodpile about which they stayed 

 for a week. There was perhaps something in the cabalistic number, seven. None 

 of the little ones met with harm, though there were two full-grown cats on the 

 premises. While the young were in the nest both the parents were kept busy 

 feeding them. Not far from the house was a brick wall. Ivy clambered over 

 a part of its surface. The wall was half sunlight, half shadow, and it was the 

 home of thousands of spiders. The wrens had discovered the insects long before, 

 for it was from the direction of the wall that the male bore spiders to his sitting 

 mate. I have seen it stated in the books that the wrens feed their young about 

 thirty times an hour. My lamp-post wrens made a much better average than 

 that. I learned from my host of the inn that the wrens had built on the lamp- 

 post top for three years. I trust that the same pair will make music and kill 

 spiders at the same old stand for years to come. 



This question of the feeding of the young brings t(j mind the fact that in 

 many bird households some of the young grow much faster than the others. 

 This has been accounted for on the ground that the bigger youngsters receive 

 the greater share of the food, either through the possible favoritism of the 

 parents or because the adult birds are unable to remember which of the offspring 

 they fed last. It is my belief, based, however, upon only two observations, that 

 the old birds feed the young ones impartially and in turn. In many human 

 families some of the boys and girls are sturdier than their brothers and sisters. 

 In these human families it will be found generally that the weaker ones get 

 the more attention and the better care. There are reasons, doubtless, for indi- 

 vidual cases of slow growth and feeble constitittions in bird families as well as in 

 the families of the humankind. 1 once saw the fledgeling members of a wood 

 pewee household ranged side by side on the dead limb of a tree growing out 

 of the depths of a ravine. A bridge spanned the ravine from bank to bank and 

 ran close to the treetop upon which the young flycatchers were perched. One 

 of the parent birds sat on the limb at the head of the family line. Every minute 

 or two the parent would launch out into the air, catch a flying insect, return to 

 the limb, and poke the morsel into the open bill of one of the young. As soon 

 as another fugitive fly happened along the operation was repeated, but the old 

 bird, as capture succeeded capture, invariably would feed the youngster whose 

 turn it was to be fed. Not once did two insect morsels go down the same throat 

 twice in succession. If one of the young received more food than another, it 

 simply arose from the fact that some of the bug specimens captured were larger 

 than others. In an hour's time the parent bird made forty apparently successful 

 hunting trips. Several times either the aim was missed or the bird ate the quarry 

 itself. It may be argued that it is an easy matter for a mother with her three 

 children ranged in line on a limb to keep in mind the order of feeding, whereas 

 when the youngsters are all jumbled up in a nest, and perhaps constantly changing 

 places, the keeping the feeding order in the parent's head may be impossible. 



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